[OCcardinal]

I would have liked to have seen a blowout, but blowouts don't guarantee you a championship.  Two seasons ago UConn finished the regular season with only one 3-point loss and an average margin of victory of 32 points. But then Arizona beat them by 10 in the Final Four. They weren't ready to face that kind of opponent. If we hope to win 6 tournament games in a row what matters is that we be able to beat all styles of play (and refereeing).

With this win we've now earned at least one victory against every tournament-quality team we've faced, except South Carolina. We also had a 12-point scoring margin improvement from the 1st USC game and did so while upping a backup freshman guard's playing time from 3 minutes to 26 minutes.  That's a terrific result. 

Nivar made some mistakes, but finished tied for 2nd in team scoring and 3rd in efficiency, with a rating of 12 (only 1 point behind Jones despite paying 9 fewer minutes). True, USC was missing Marshall, but Marshall's good defense was offset by terrible offense. In the earlier matchup vs Stanford she shot 2-12 from the field (and 2-6 from the free throw line) with an efficiency rating of 3, second worst on her team. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares.  Compare Brink, who last night did not have her best shooting night, but still finished with an Efficiency of 20 (leading all players on both teams).

What I like from this year's team is that when facing the better teams in the conference we seem to be learning more from our first matchups than our opponents.  Notice our margin improvements against the two best teams we've played twice so far:

Opponent 1st Game/2nd Game (Difference) 
#18 AZ 16/24 (+8) [compare that to Arizona's +13 margin improvement in their second game with Utah]
#25 USC -9/3 (+12) [compare that to USC's +33 margin improvement in their second game with Oregon]

(I recognize that was not the case with Cal, where our margin shrunk by 13, but I chalk that up to a combination of it being early in the season and perhaps overconfidence.)

What's interesting is that we were not able to improve against the best Pac 12 teams at all in our National Championship season two seasons ago:

Opponent 1st Game/2nd Game (Difference) [Rankings = pre-tournament AP rankings]
#9 UCLA 12/-4 (-16)
#11 AZ 27/14 (-13)
#23 OR 7/2 (-5)

Maybe that was more a function of the Santa Clara County quarantine than anything else.  But it is a striking difference nonetheless.  We have three more tough second games coming up, so fingers crossed the trend continues.

[OCcardinal]

I would have liked to have seen a blowout, but blowouts don't guarantee you a championship.  Two seasons ago UConn finished the regular season with only one 3-point loss and an average margin of victory of 32 points. But then Arizona beat them by 10 in the Final Four. They weren't ready to face that kind of opponent. If we hope to win 6 tournament games in a row what matters is that we be able to beat all styles of play (and refereeing).

With this win we've now earned at least one victory against every tournament-quality team we've faced, except South Carolina. We also had a 12-point scoring margin improvement from the 1st USC game and did so while upping a backup freshman guard's playing time from 3 minutes to 26 minutes.  That's a terrific result. 

Nivar made some mistakes, but finished tied for 2nd in team scoring and 3rd in efficiency, with a rating of 12 (only 1 point behind Jones despite paying 9 fewer minutes). True, USC was missing Marshall, but Marshall's good defense was offset by terrible offense. In the earlier matchup vs Stanford she shot 2-12 from the field (and 2-6 from the free throw line) with an efficiency rating of 3, second worst on her team. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares.  Compare Brink, who last night did not have her best shooting night, but still finished with an Efficiency of 20 (leading all players on both teams).

What I like from this year's team is that when facing the better teams in the conference we seem to be learning more from our first matchups than our opponents.  Notice our margin improvements against the two best teams we've played twice so far:

Opponent 1st Game/2nd Game (Difference) 
#18 AZ 16/24 (+8) [compare that to Arizona's +13 margin improvement in their second game with Utah]
#25 USC -9/3 (+12) [compare that to USC's +33 margin improvement in their second game with Oregon]

(I recognize that was not the case with Cal, where our margin shrunk by 13, but I chalk that up to a combination of it being early in the season and perhaps overconfidence.)

What's interesting is that we were not able to improve against the best Pac 12 teams at all in our National Championship season two seasons ago:

Opponent 1st Game/2nd Game (Difference) [Rankings = pre-tournament AP rankings]
#9 UCLA 12/-4 (-16)
#11 AZ 27/14 (-13)
#23 OR 7/2 (-5)

Maybe that was more a function of the Santa Clara County quarantine than anything else.  But it is a striking difference nonetheless.  We have three more tough second games coming up, so fingers crossed the trend continues.